US telecommunications equipment maker CommScope will acquire Arris, in a $7.4B deal valued at $5.69 billion, with the difference comprised of CommScope’s assumption of Arris’s debt. As part of the deal, the Carlyle Group will make a $1M equity investment in CommScope for an approximate 16% stake in the new company.
CommScope’s CEO Eddie Edwards has claimed the two companies’ product lines are complementary, and that the combined company will “enable end-to-end wired and wireless communications infrastructure solutions that neither company could otherwise achieve on its own.”
The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2019.

The number of devices having at least one USB-C port is forecast to increase at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 70 percent, growing from 300 million devices in 2016 to just under five billion devices in 2021.

Display shipments for notebook PCs are forecast to increase by 5 percent in 2017 to 177 million units compared to the previous year, while notebook PC unit shipments are expected to remain flat during the same period.

This is the third edition of our report on wired interface technologies. Earlier two editions of ‘Interface Battleground Report’ were published in 2014 and 2015. This latest report titled ‘Interface Battleground Report - 2017’ provides an updated view of the state of technological developments and adoption of interface technology solutions such as wired video interfaces and wired data performance interfaces within the consumer segment.

The production of Q (quarter) panels is an emerging business model for Chinese and Taiwanese tablet panel makers which shifts more of the panel production process to Chinese solution providers. Through this process, Jason Hsu, senior analyst in IHS, reports that both the panel maker and the solution provider benefit.